


Dawn

by cynthia_arrow (thesilverarrow)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), References to Azkaban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 09:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5739295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/cynthia_arrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius dreams in color. Severus does not sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to livejournal, 2007.

Sirius dreams in color. Quidditch pitch green. The hazel of James's eyes. Gryffindor scarlet. The sky after the sunset but before the light is truly gone: flame, copper, gold. The deep blue, and even the stark black, long before the incredible subtle color of dawn.   
  
The most frightening thing about waking up in Azkaban was waking up to a flat gray, remembering that he was no longer in a world of light, the wide open world that he used to breathe in without even thinking. In hindsight, he thinks of Moony and how he must've felt coming back to himself after the wolf, except it was in reverse—control and wholeness ripped open with a sharp claw and everything left falling open, out, down, bare to the dark dark things that eagerly waited.  
  
Moony said he never remembered the feeling of losing himself to the darkness. The sensation was always annihilated with the wildness of the wolf, which in its turn was cast out, too, again and again. Sirius, however, had no such way of casting out the darkness or forgetting the way it swallowed him up—daily, every morning when he awoke to a place leeched of everything good, but especially color.  
  
*  
  
Severus does not sleep. He hasn't much in years. There is always a little too much left unresolved in him: ideas demanding calculation, plans insisting on being brought to bear; power struggling up through his chest and itching at his hands, palms sweaty. He thought he'd gotten used to that, a long time ago when he was still young enough to believe such restlessness was not a curse.   
  
But now, lying awake and watching this man sleep makes him all too aware of how much there is he doesn't let himself think about during the day, how it only comes out at night, in the pitch-blackness of his room in the castle, nothing else to distract him from himself. Here, the dark is even more dangerous. Street light filters in through the windows at night, and though it's dim enough to unclasp his mind, let everything tumble out, that slip of light is also diffuse enough that he can't help but see all of it, every ball he somehow keeps in the air at once. There are too many, far too many for him to be spending whole nights with the Order—with Sirius.   
  
His brain reels, winding over paths that go between the perilous sharpness of the Dark Lord and the muddled, worn, and claustrophobic world he's inured himself to keeping faith with, that requires of him this traveling. It is not like Lily's eyes entreating him to stay; for these people, he must first go in order to return.  
  
Sirius never asks him where he's been when he shuts the door to the bedroom. So while his brain paces, even as he lapses into sleep, his body, at least, is satisfied.   
  
*  
  
Sirius reluctantly opens his eyes at daybreak and finds Severus burrowed into the blankets, warm and relaxed but with his brow furrowed. Always furrowed. Always so much he doesn't say. Sirius thinks he finally understands that.  
  
He brings up his hand to touch that lined face, and his thumb sweeps over his pale cheeks and traces its way down his remarkable nose.   
  
Severus awakens with a start, clutching Sirius's wrist, although his eyes don't open. His body hasn't moved, either. They don't fear each other anymore, but instinct is not so easily discarded.   
  
Severus's grip relaxes, and he pulls Sirius's hand down to his chest, warm palm sliding into place over his, pressing flat, clasping.  
  
"Bad dream?" Sirius asks.  
  
Severus nods, eyes still closed. Then they pop open, unfocused and soft but so incredibly dark. Palpable. They shine.  
  
"I never noticed just how deeply brown your eyes were," Sirius murmurs. "Not black but brown. Like rich chocolate."  
  
Severus's face struggles into a smile. "Morning light is a deceptive thing."  
  
"Not deceptive. Alive with gray, the kind you never see except in the morning. Blue-white like a patronus. And then the sun comes up out of it like an obscene swirl of lemon taffy and just…just lights the whole of…everything with the coolest, mellowest, brightest, best light there is. Totally illuminating."  
  
"Or obliterating."  
  
Sirius closes his eyes. When he opens them, it's still dawn, and Severus is still there. He doesn't know why, only that he is.  
  
"Well. I suppose that's sometimes just as welcome," he says as he rolls onto his back, as he rolls his wrist and pulls Severus toward him.


End file.
